(p/b) filming history

"I have tried to travel with a seeing eye, for what I saw the audience saw".As we move into the twenty-first century, and look back on what was recorded of the twentieth, a significant part of that historical record is provided by the newsreels. Between 1910 and 1979 the newsreels in Britain were shown twice-weekly in cinemas and gave millions their picture of national and world events. Their libraries now supply television documentaries with archive footage that illustrates the personalities, passions, pastimes and tragedies that filled the cinema screens, and provides such a substantial moving picture record of the past. The people who made the newsreels were the editors and cameramen. Their personal stories help to illuminate this record of the past, as well as being documents of a lively, compelling time when moving picture news was primarily an entertainment medium. There have been too few such memoirs, however, which makes this publication of John Turner's 'life with the newsreels' so valuable. Turner worked as a cameraman for Gaumont-British News between 1937 and 1952. As a war correspondent he was attached to the Royal Navy and filmed in the UK, North Sea, Mediterranean, Italy, North Africa, north west Europe and the Far East. In peace time he filmed many classic news stories, and was in India at the time of independence and Gandhi's assassination. In 1952 he became the royal cameraman for the Newsreel Association, filming the royal Commonwealth tours and numerous exclusive royal events. Between 1962 and 1970 he became production manager and news editor for Pathe News. At the invitation of the British Universities Film & Video Council, he has now written the account of his life with the newsreels, which serves both as a record of a remarkable career and as a history of the sound newsreels in Britain. It documents in absorbing detail his filming of such key historical events, but it also illustrates the working life of the newsreel cameraman, and his particular view of the world and its news. Filming History: The Memoirs of John Turner, Newsreel Cameraman is a significant addition to the literature of the newsreel, and illuminates the way in which this particular form of the moving image heritage was created, and why it is of such importance for the study and understanding of twentieth-century history. (From the publisher)